


Blood of Old Supplications

by akainagi



Series: Poetic Licenses [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 10:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akainagi/pseuds/akainagi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You think you have time. But, really, you only have now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood of Old Supplications

Give the kid a captaincy (of the flagship no less) and he runs and hides

Leonard hauled himself up the last of the stone steps leading to the small shrine. A neat courtyard nestled in the middle of one of the ethnic districts that peppered the metropolis of San Francisco. So unlike the type of church that Leonard frequented in his boyhood, when he was all starched and pressed and squirming under the watchful eyes of his older relations. The mere fact that he was looking for Jim Kirk in any house of worship gave Leonard the urge to check for evidence of alternate universes.

Jim had brought him here once. On New Year’s Day, this past year at the Academy - the only New Year’s Leonard had ever spent in San Francisco. _God_ , he thought to himself, _was that only a few months ago?_ A few months ago, Vulcan had been a planet, not just debris and memory. A few months ago, two-thirds of their graduating class had still been alive.

Grinning and wide-eyed, Jim had dragged Leonard around the shrine, pointing out statues, naming deities, and ringing the shrine’s giant bell like an oversized toddler. He had also greeted the shrine’s occupants in their native tongue with a fluency that might have surprised Leonard at one time. 

‘I come here when I want to think,’ Jim had told him with a rare, honest, open expression. Like he was sharing some closely-guarded secret. Leonard had looked at the noisy revelers packing the shrine and probably said something sarcastic – he couldn’t remember what. He did, however, remember asking how the hell a kid from the Midwest spoke fluent Japanese. Jim’s eyes had blanked for a moment before laughing the question off with something appropriately smart-assed. Leonard had found he hated that blank expression.

He hated it just as much now. He found Jim sitting on a low stone bench, his face closed to the world, eyes staring emptily at mountain of tiny wooden plaques adorning part of the shrine. He didn’t even acknowledge Leonard’s presence. So the doctor played along for once. Made a show of examining the monument of hanging wood squares decorated with writing in a myriad of languages. Quite a few were in standard. He picked one: ‘Please let my son be okay.’ Another: ‘Dear God, please protect my family.’ Another: ‘Gods, please make mommy stop crying.’ Another: ‘Gods, please protect our troops.’ Another: ‘Dear God, please stop the bad people.’ Another: ‘God, please save the Earth.’

 _God._

Leonard fairly stumbled over to his friend, sitting down heavily and wordlessly at the younger man’s side.

“I told you this place was quiet every day except New Years,” Jim finally said. Leonard noted that other man’s voice cracked only slightly.

The doctor was quite impressed at the steadiness of his own voice. “Might have to do with the fact that it’s barely dawn. I can’t believe I got my ass out of bed for you.”

Jim sighed, his eyes still fixed on the monument of hand-written supplications. “I came here so no one would bear witness to my pathetic emo brooding. Don’t fuck up my plans, Bones.”

“You never planned anything in your life.” But Leonard realized as soon as the words left his mouth that it wasn’t true. Not anymore. 

Jim huffed what might have been a laugh. “When did you get to know me so well?”

 _Sometimes I think I know you, and other times I don’t have a fucking clue._ “About three years ago, I think.”

“Was that before or after you puked on my shoes?”

“Before,” Leonard lied easily. 

The young captain’s laugh was genuine this time, but short-lived. Then Jim finally, finally turned his gaze from the mass of wooden prayers and straight into Leonard’s own. The uncertainty on anyone else’s face would have been appropriate to the occasion. On Jim’s eternally cocksure visage, it was vaguely terrifying. Even though Leonard had never once, in their three-plus-year association, assumed that Jim was not a human being under all that bluster.

Leonard blinked first, returning his gaze back to the pile of tiny wooden plaques. He contemplated. What could he say? What was the appropriate etiquette for this situation? Not that Jim had ever given a shit about etiquette in any area of his existence. There was a subtle rustling. The doctor suppressed an inhalation when he felt the younger man’s shoulder against his own. It was surprising, but not unwelcome. Jim had always been a tactile person, but not usually during times of personal crisis. That kind of situation was more typified by total emotional withdrawal on Jim’s part. The change was again surprising, but again not unwelcome. The silence stretched between the two men.

“They’re called _ema_ ,” Jim offered finally, quietly, his voice floating on the early-morning chill. “They’re prayers. You’re supposed to write them out and wait for the Gods to answer.” The younger man’s profile lit in a small, tight smile. “I’ve never seen so many at one time.” More silence, stretching almost to the breaking point. Then, softly and finally: “All those people begging for deliverance.”

Leonard could almost picture it: all those men, woman, children. All writing out their supplications to their pantheon of Gods. Praying to the last line of defense against Nero and his perverted sense of vengeance. Not knowing that they were really praying to several hundred very mortal beings up in the stars, ensconced in a battered ship and grasping desperately at straws. The human beside him foremost among all those saviors.

The doctor contemplated the man at his side, and remembered. 

He remembered the overwhelming feeling of _(no, not supposed to happen this way)_ wrongness at the thought of leaving Jim behind in the wake of the Vulcan distress call. He remembered the moment where his brain, heart and loyalty rebelled and he’d taken a hypo to the kid and dragged him along anyway, orders be fucked. He remembered wanting to punch Spock’s in his supercilious face because not only had the green-blooded bastard thrown Jim’s father in his face before the entire student body, but he had just _marooned_ the kid on a freezing, hostile ball of rock. He remembered standing there on the bridge as the same bastard hobgoblin tried to throttle younger man into oblivion. He remembered seeing Jim off on that final suicide run to the Narada. Above all Leonard remembered the waiting. And if he had done a little praying on his friend’s behalf, well that was nobody’s business but his own. And if he had cursed all the things he had left unsaid between them? Well, that was his business too.

Before he could second-guess himself, he slung an arm over the hunched shoulders of his best friend. Jim tensed for one brief, awkward moment. And then eased with an exhalation of relief.

They were still here. The Earth was still here. And now they had the next five years. Plenty of time.

Leonard looked at the hundreds of hanging blocks, some scrawled with a sure hand, some with the shaky penmanship of the very young, or very old. Or perhaps just the very scared, looking out across the curve of the planet at the end of the world. 

He drew his friend a little closer. And Jim, silent and pliant underneath Leonard’s hands, let him.  


  


**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the Pablo Neruda poem "So That You Will Hear Me." There is now a sequel to this ficlet: "Happy Hour of Assault and the Kiss."


End file.
